In a message dated 7/20/2011 2:31:05 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, naomif...@verizon.net writes:
So I’ve confirmed that there are at least two homes near 50th & Baltimore that have had mail going missing over the last few weeks. Both homes have exterior (unsecured) mailboxes. Sadly, it's not a good idea to have mailboxes that are accessible to any miscreants who happen to wander by. This, whether they're unsecured or have key locks -- because it doesn't take much to pry open a locked mailbox door. (Tenants sometimes do it when they can't find their keys!) We tried using those officially-recommended post-office "key keepers." Small metal boxes locked with keys only postal people are supposed to have -- inside of which is a key to the front door of the building. In theory, the letter carrier gets the key to the building and puts the mail into boxes inside. Unfortunately, these are also vulnerable to low-life ... who can then not only gain access to the mail but to the inside of the building as well. The best solution we've found -- and it's not ideal -- is to keep the outer doors of our buildings locked and have fairly big mail slots in them. The mail then gets dropped on the floors of the vestibules. We have also built a shelf in each vestibule and have found our tenants cooperative when we ask them to pick up anything they find on the floor and leave what isn't theirs on the shelf for the other occupants. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alan Krigman KRF Management, ICON/Information Concepts Inc 211 S 45th St, Philadelphia PA 19104-2918 215-349-6500, fax 215-349-6502 krf...@aol.com or al.krig...@krf.icodat.com